Museums

Bow Street Museum of Crime and Justice

Where policing began: the Bow Street Runners' station, with its cells kept, opened as a museum in 2021 under the hotel that took over the old court.

Best small museums

In 1749 the magistrate Henry Fielding, better known for Tom Jones, recruited a handful of constables at his court on Bow Street to run down criminals across London, and the Bow Street Runners were the first professional police the city had, eighty years before Peel's. The court and the police station beside it saw everyone who mattered in London crime for two centuries: Oscar Wilde was charged here in 1895, Dr Crippen, Roger Casement, the suffragettes and the Kray twins passed through, and the cells were in use until the station closed in 1992 and the court in 2006. The building became a hotel, and in 2021 the museum opened on the ground floor of the old station with the cells as they were, telling the story of the Runners, the courts and the policing of Covent Garden, with a cutlass, a rattle and other relics lent by the Metropolitan Police's own collection. It took its present name in 2025.

Where

28 Bow Street, WC2E 7AW

Nearest station

Covent Garden · 2 min walk

Hours

NearbyMuseums

• London Transport Museum2 min walk
• Library and Museum of Freemasonry2 min walk
• Courtauld Gallery4 min walk

NearbyOther Categories

• Side HustleCocktails1 min walk
• Royal Opera HousePerformance venues1 min walk
• Drury LaneBeautiful Streets1 min walk

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